Brave New Kitty

I’ve recently gotten hooked on Sex and The City reruns, thanks to my TIVO. At first it was a guilty pleasure, but I’ve decided that this show celebrates some lovely and important feminine ideals, like friendship, self-esteem, and unapologetic sexuality, which are all paths to self-acceptance and maybe even (eventually, and with the right focus) self-actualization. Last night, I watched an episode where one of the characters, Samantha, was diagnosed with breast cancer. When her doctor told her that childless women had a slightly higher risk factor for it, she interpreted this as a subtle judgment about her chosen lifestyle. “You’re saying this is my fault?” she cried, and stormed out of his office then and there, without a second thought, in search of a more supportive doctor.

The doctor wasn’t really saying that; he was merely prattling on about statistics, as doctors are prone to do. That isn’t the point. The point is that, at the slightest hint that she brought the cancer on herself, Samantha had heard enough, and was off in search of a doctor free of judgment and personal opinions about the cause of her illness.

This scene brought tears to my eyes. Sure, Samantha overreacted. But still, wow. For a woman to be that sure of herself, to believe the cancer was bad luck, nothing more, and to be completely unwilling to be in the presence of someone who gives off the slightest whiff of disagreement on that point…just, wow. It’s an utterly rational, utterly self-affirming reaction to a cancer diagnosis. It’s also tragically rare, an upstream swim against widely accepted notions about disease.

We have a tendency to believe that if we contract a serious illness, we’ve somehow brought it on ourselves. The first place we tend to go is inward, as in “What did I do to deserve this?” Diet? Lifestyle? Stress? And if we find nothing conclusive in any of these areas, then: Karma? Which, of course, can’t be disproved, so we settle down firmly on it, because it’s the only thing that can make sense of contracting a serious illness, whether it’s us or someone we know.

This “Blame the Victim” mentality goes at least as far back as The Inquisition, and rears its head today even in modern medicine with notions such as those challenged by Susan Sontag in her now classic study, Illness as Metaphor, which was “the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient’s will to resist disease.” In other words, the way the medical establishment encourages sick people to fight their illnesses carries with it an implicit message of blame. Perhaps this happens because the doctors are victims themselves, of a mentality so ingrained in our culture (and I think in most others as well) that such blame is our default outlook unless we consciously seek to challenge it.

Sadly, most of us do not.

Even those who are supposedly on the cutting edge of higher consciousness are guilty of this. Some of the worst purveyors of the “illness is deserved” mentality today are various New Age groups, such as certain Buddhist practitioners (for example, this site, claiming that “Buddhism attributes karma as an important contributing factor to health and disease” or this one, which claims that proper meditation can cure illness) and the entire holistic healing movement, which, while fundamentally rational, is generally practiced under a grave misconception: that we have complete control over our health.

We simply do not. And I think this whole misinformed notion is epitomized by the Law of Attraction. In recent years, the Law of Attraction has become wildly popular, promising its practitioners everything they want in life if they really believe in it and if they practice it “correctly.” It’s really just a bastardization of positive thinking, cloaked in pseudoscience to make it sound both weightier and loftier than it really is. (This article at ZenHabits.net is a good introduction to what’s wrong with the LOA and why.) In relation to getting sick, it’s easy to see the logical shortcomings of this “law,” and thus by induction, the shortcomings of all philosophies that implicitly purport blaming the victim. All you have to do is carry this type of “positive thinking” and “empowerment” to its logical conclusion, which is: if you have complete control over what you want, then you must have wanted to get sick.

That’s preposterous. Does this mean the millions of poor, suffering third world inhabitants who are born into suffering and have almost no hope of getting out of it want this misfortune? Or that, if you want negativity in your life, because of self-esteem issues or the like, you would have to wait for a serious disease to strike? That’s just silly. It’s ridiculously easy to make negativity happen; you can just go out and get into a car accident, or overdose on drugs, or commit a crime, or engage in any number of other dangerous and self-destructive acts. If you want negativity in your life, you can find it. People do so all the time. You can see examples everywhere you look. And not one of them has anything to do with waiting around to contract a serious illness.

But the most glaring logical fallacy is, I believe, this: Say you’ve practiced the LOA and have had good results; good things have come into your life and you’re an outspoken proponent of its power and virtue. Let’s also say you’re health conscious, eating well, exercising regularly, and keeping your stress level at a minimum.

Then you get sick.

How do you explain that to yourself?

You have to come up with all sorts of Ptolemaic circles of logic to uncover your hidden negativity, the “source” of your illness. And you’ll find something, because we all have buried pain, and telling yourself you’ve figured it out will make you feel better, giving you a sense of control over your fate.

Then you get sicker.

Now what? Do you dig deeper? Look even further down for the negativity “causing” your illness? Commit to even greater levels of wellness and nutrition and meditation and positive thinking? All of which are fine, but none of which guarantee—and in your heart of hearts, you know this—a full recovery?

Because the truth is that sometimes we get sick. In fact, we’re all going to eventually get sick and eventually die. If we’re lucky we can put it off until old age, but there’s no way to avoid it.

And this brings us to the real reason for all blame-the-victim—oops, I mean “empowerment”—mentalities: they allow us to feel in control of things we have no control over. If it’s ourselves, we can “take charge” of our health and figure out where we “went wrong” so we can fix it. If it’s somebody else, we can feel immune, safe in the belief that he did something to bring it on himself. Nobody wants to believe it could be as simple as bad luck because that means we, too, are susceptible.

But it is that simple. Otherwise, everyone who’s “deserved” to suffer and die a horrible death (such as Hitler, Stalin, and maybe Dick Cheney) would, and decent people would never have bad luck or illness. That’s just not how life works. People can be fastidious about their health and still get sick; they can be cautious and sensible and still get unlucky. Conversely, people can smoke and drink and eat junk food and live to be 90, and they can live recklessly and never have a single repercussion. Sometimes, people get what they deserve, but not always. Luck, good and bad, is a huge part of life, and while we have control over our choices (and should exercise that control to the best of our ability), we have no control whatsoever over our luck.

It’s not that positive thinking and healthy habits aren’t good; of course they are. But believing that they can save us from being human, and that being human—that is, getting sick—is somehow bad or immoral, well, that’s an unhealthy extreme that does way more harm than good in the world. It’s a childish, unrealistic, and highly negative way to view illness, misfortune, and life in general.

In many ways, people have personal agency exactly backwards. We tend to blame external factors for things we actually do have the power and responsibility to change (our career, our weight, our anxiety, our depression, our relationships), but hold ourselves accountable for misfortunes we have almost no control over at all. In matters of life and death, it seems, the illusion of control takes precedence over accepting our fate and doing the best we can with it. I find it absolutely, tragically insane that the most popular “empowerment” movements of today support this illusion, implicitly or otherwise.

So when Samantha vehemently refused to see her cancer as her fault, she wasn’t rejecting treatment and care and good health; she was rejecting the facile idea that she was to blame for getting sick. Talk about life-affirming! There is no better way to look at illness than this. It is the most life-validating view, totally judgment-free, and it liberates you to pour all your energy and focus into getting better. You may or may not, but at least you’re seeing your fate through mature eyes and dealing with life on life’s terms. And if you’re doing that, then even illness can become an avenue for growth. Such was the case with Treya Wilber in Grace and Grit, a remarkable story about a woman’s journey of self-actualization through her battle with cancer.

That’s really the best any of us can do.

Several years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian for moral reasons. I had become aware of practices in raising animals and in slaughterhouses that appalled me, and I decided that it was morally wrong to consume animals that lived and died in fear and misery. I thought it would be easy: just cut meat out of my diet, right? Wrong. When I started reading labels, I discovered that there are animal products in all sorts of foods that you would never think had them: vegetable soup and jello, for instance. And other common products, too, such as soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Then it occurred to me that, if I didn’t want to be a hypocrite, I would have to rid myself of all associations with leather, too. And what about dairy? Do I stop eating dairy because of how milk cows are raised (which is, bred to have udders so large they can barely walk and shot full of hormones to increase their milk production to a freakishly high level)?

The point is, when I really considered this issue in detail, it became an overwhelming problem to solve. I had to wear leather shoes, for example, or my feet suffocated. And there was no way to determine the exact content of many products. Organic was no answer, either. Just because animals are raised with organic feed and not shot up with chemicals is no guarantee of their humane treatment and death. Also, products labeled organic are only legally required to contain 85% organic ingredients; if your stance is a moral one, that’s not good enough. “Free range” was also no solution: “free range” meat is also no guarantee that an animal lived and died humanely. Furthermore, nobody is labeling leather goods “free range” or “organic” yet, so no matter how scrupulous I might become about my food and household products, I would never be able to do so about leather goods, which I could never completely give up.

In the end, I decided it would be hypocritical to call myself a vegetarian for moral reasons and continue to wear leather and consume animal products out of ignorance or laziness, and frankly, I found the vigilance necessary to not do either exhausting (and almost impossible, anyway). I made uneasy peace with the fact that humans are at the top of the food chain, that we’ve been living off of animal products for thousands and thousands of years, and that denying this would be naïve and intellectually dishonest. I am still opposed to many husbandry and slaughterhouse practices, but I realize now that I have no control over them—including buying “organic” and “free range”—and that to pretend I do would be more about wanting to see myself a certain way than to actually care about these things.

After coming to this awareness, I started to notice how many vegetarians and “organophiles” routinely betray their own principles. They eat junk food, dairy, and all sorts of packaged grocery products without questioning the ingredients or production processes, throwing organic produce, Cheetos, and Formula 407 in their grocery carts with equal disinterest, then smugly demanding paper grocery bags at checkout time without ever considering the impact of this on the environment (both reusable cloth and recyclable plastic bags being better environmental choices, according to my understanding). They suspend their principles if they’re at a restaurant or a friend’s house for dinner. They wear leather, and sometimes even fur. They have no inkling of all the products they use and ingest that contain animal products because it’s never occurred to them to look. And I found all of these practices to be the norm, and not the exception: it seems good enough to many people to see themselves a certain way, whether they actually are or not.

A similar pattern of hypocrisy also occurs in environmentalism. I’m afraid in recent years, as the trend toward being “green” has exploded into popular culture, the problem has gotten worse, not better. As more and more media attention is being given to global warming and “the environmental crisis,” more and more products are being invented to satisfy our desire to see ourselves as “environmentally conscious.” You can go to Target or even Wal-Mart, for god’s sake, and see products as diverse as clothing, candy, and cosmetics labeled “organic” or “all natural” or “free trade.” We now have a “green” cable television channel, whatever that means (you don’t need electricity to watch it, perhaps?).

Labeling is no guarantee of a product’s eco-friendliness. Of products that actually are produced organically (by the legal definition) and free of environment-harming chemicals, if they weren’t locally grown and made, then they were transported to market over long distances—sometimes from different continents—with hydrocarbon fuels, and often with eco-damaging refrigerants to preserve freshness, as well. So even “all natural,” “organic,” and most other buzzwords are no guarantee that the product you’re buying is not tainted by environmentally unfriendly practices. (Although the jury is still out on this too: one study says that because locally grown products are brought to market so inefficiently, it’s actually more damaging to the environment than buying non-organic foods shipped in larger quantities. Here’s a Wikipedia article that contains links to many of these issues in more depth.)

Also, buying products in a co-op, natural foods store, or even a farmer’s market, is no guarantee of being eco-friendly. All of these outlets are chock full of products grown or manufactured traditionally and containing pesticides, herbicides, harmful chemicals, and whatever else you want to avoid, unless specifically stating otherwise. Here’s a great article about “natural” beauty products and “natural” food stores that you might find interesting.

All of this is to say that 1) the product-to-market chain and 2) product labeling are both phenomenally, staggeringly complex issues, and unless you are committed to and vigilant about understanding them, then environmental concern, as well as most other claims about conscientious consumption, is largely about your own self-image.

The issue that really brought this to a head for me was hybrid cars. Since gas skyrocketed last spring, I’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of new Priuses on the road. This is one of the most ridiculous hypocrisies of all, because it’s a really, really expensive one.

There are two rational reasons a person would buy a hybrid car: to save money on gas, or to be environmentally conscious. If you’ve gone out and bought a new hybrid vehicle, you’ve missed the mark on both counts.

If you bought the car for economical reasons, you’ve just spent somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand dollars to save about fifty dollars a week on gas. If you do the math, and are honest about the total cost per mile of the new car (including cost of purchase, gas, oil, maintenance, insurance, wear and tear, and depreciation), then it becomes immediately obvious that it’s much cheaper and much more practical to buy a used just-about-anything than a new hybrid, and cheaper still to just keep the car you now have if it’s paid for, even if it’s a gas guzzler.

If you bought the car for environmental reasons, then you aren’t considering all the factors, either. The energy consumption required to put a car out into the world is immense. The raw materials alone include the manufacture and shipping of steel, plastic, rubber, glass, and paper. Then there’s the energy consumption used in the manufacturing itself (huge!). Then there’s designing, engineering, marketing and advertising. Then there’s shipping the car to markets all over the planet. I can’t find any statistics on this, but it seems like common sense that buying a new car, of any make, contributes to this huge amount of energy consumption, while buying a used car, of any make, does not.

What this means is, if you’ve rushed out to buy a new hybrid car without considering all the relevant factors, it’s more likely that it was about your self-image (I care about the environment! I’m driving a hybrid! or worse, I’m going to save money!), or about wanting a new car and rationalizing buying one, or some combination of both, than it was about saving money or saving the planet. The Prius is the new Corvette; hybrids are now fashionable, and who doesn’t want to be fashionable? And there’s nothing wrong with this, as long as you’re honest with yourself about what you’re doing. A hybrid is the best choice out there for anyone who wants to see himself as an environmentally conscious person. But without the aforementioned vigilance about an issue as layered and complex (and political) as the environment, that’s about all it is.

On the other hand, if you went out and bought a used hybrid, and did so because you needed a car, then yay!! for you: you deserve the good environmental citizen award.

You may think me a hypocrite for giving up on vegetarianism because I found it impossible to be true to the practice; you may say making the effort at all is better than not making the effort, regardless of the issue. But I didn’t give up on vegetarianism. I gave up on labeling myself a vegetarian when I knew it wasn’t, and could never be, the whole truth. And I agree that some effort is better than no effort at all. I’m not talking about giving up on the effort; I’m talking about being honest with yourself about the sincerity of that effort.

I object to people deluding themselves into believing they’re making an effort when they really just want to see themselves, and to be seen by others, as making an effort. There’s a big difference. If it’s about making the effort, then you won’t have a problem admitting where you’ve fallen short and have a few things to learn. You will practice skepticism and dig below the marketing fluff for hard facts and true understanding. You will be willing to make some painful sacrifices; it’s not possible to be environmentally conscious without doing so. And you will avoid giving yourself hard and fast labels. But if it’s about your self-image, then you probably resent having this pointed out because it interferes with how you want to see yourself, and might require you to confront both your desire to be fashionable and your lack of any authentic sense of responsibility about the environment.

Is it okay to be fashionably green because “well, at least it’s a start”? Because some effort is better than none? Yes and no. I’m not sure a thing counts if it isn’t motivated by a person’s values, because when something new captures pop culture’s fancy, being green will just fall by the wayside like old technology and the Independent Party, at least until we’re coerced by law to comply (which also doesn’t count, but hey, at least it gets the job done).

I guess it’s the difference between critical thought and dogmatism. Dogmatism, in this case, about blindly believing in marketing phrases, fashionable trends, and inaccurate self-images with little interest in deeper understanding. If you fall into this category, shame on you, because willful lack of critical thinking does the planet way more harm than good whatever the topic. The most important resource we have is 100% renewable, infinitely reusable, and capable of solving any problem we can possibly conjure up: our ability to think.

Let’s not squander it.

I hear people say “they did the best they could” a lot, usually in a hands thrown up, what can you do? kind of reference to narcissistic parents or siblings who treat them disrespectfully and aren’t willing to change. The implication is that these people needn’t be held accountable for the hurtful things they did (and often still do), and that not holding them accountable is how you forgive them. This is the wrong use of this phrase, and a great example of a tragic misunderstanding that keeps us stuck in unhealthy relationships.

It’s a tough problem. “They did the best they could” sounds good; it feels soothing and hopeful coming out of our mouths; it implies that we’ve reached an appealing level of acceptance and forgiveness. So we get to see ourselves as growing and spiritual people, and we also get to avoid unpleasant conversations and difficult boundary-setting with the people who are hurting us. Used incorrectly, “they did the best they could” allows us the illusion that people who treat us badly can’t control themselves, and that we are wrong and bad to want otherwise.

But of course, we do want otherwise, and no amount of pretending we don’t will ever change that. A child wanting her parents’ love and respect is the most natural thing in the world—and this is perhaps the biggest reason why it’s so easy to fall into the “they did the best they could” trap: doing so lets us avoid acknowledging the deeply buried grief naturally accompanying any childhood that brings us to the point of having to say “they did the best they could.” In other words, if we have to say it, then we have to deal with how our parents’ narcissism affected us—and continues to affect us.

When we get into recovery, we work so hard to develop mutually supportive relationships with people. If we then go back to our families and allow ourselves to be treated disrespectfully, it’s soooo damaging to our spirit. In large part, this is due to the irrationality of the exception we make: They don’t know any better. Or I only have to put up with it once in awhile…or whatever. However you rationalize people’s behavior, if it doesn’t come from a respectful place, then it’s not good for you and it’s not okay, whether or not they’re related to you. If respectful relationships are important to you, then you have an inalienable human right to require that all your personal relationships meet a minimum level of mutual respect and kindness. Period.

It’s a hard thing to do: demand respect and set boundaries and force change onto people who are probably going to resist it vehemently. We may not think the effort is worth it, and this can be easy to rationalize if we think it’s just about us. But there is another, equally important reason to demand respectful relationships from all the people in your life, and it is this: holding people accountable is the most loving thing you can do for them.

Holding people accountable for their behavior is the most loving, respectful way to interact with them, whether they appreciate it or not. It is the very essence of forgiveness because without it, there is no willingness, no impetus, no desire, and no real (that is, unselfish) love. Having an empty, one-sided relationship with a narcissist is not good for either of you: it saps your spirit, and it doesn’t give him an opportunity to do things differently. In short, if you want to do the most loving thing, you will have to set boundaries and have honest conversations. Ugh. But there is no other way.

There’s no talking yourself out of it, either. It’s true that narcissists typically behave as they do because they are emotionally undeveloped, and in that sense, they did indeed “do the best they could.” But it’s not a can’t, it’s a won’t. That is, narcissists are almost always capable of change if pushed, at least of the simple behavioral changes that respectfulness requires. However, because of their strong personalities, addictions, passive-aggressiveness, ragefulness, or victim mentality (or whatever brand of dysfunction that goes on in your particular case), they’ve kept themselves conveniently out of pushing range. But here’s the thing to remember: when you understand this, it becomes your responsibility, as a compassionate human being, to push them a little, at least as far as you’re concerned. Setting boundaries with someone is like giving them multiple precious gifts: your caring, your honesty, your respect, your trust, your unselfish love, your willingness to do the right thing. If you understand this responsibility, and choose not to offer these gifts, then you likely have some of your own issues to deal with: fear, narcissism, or a mixture of both.

People may or may not change; that’s not up to you. It’s also not terribly relevant, because you are only responsible for your end of the exchange. Also, if you make the request/demand for respectful treatment and are refused, then you have the responsibility to change the way you connect with that person (which can sometimes mean no connection at all). Not doing so is like saying respect is optional, and it isn’t.

You can forgive people whether or not they change, but allowing yourself to be treated disrespectfully isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about avoidance. Letting people treat you poorly in the name of “they did the best they could” or even worse, “they’re doing the best they can,” is a dishonest, fundamentally childish way to avoid an uncomfortable responsibility that falls on the shoulders of people who pursue a higher calling. Don’t do it. Speak up for yourself, even if your voice shakes, and make the Universe a little bit better place to live in (because doing the right thing always does). Only when we understand that “they did the best they could” is not an excuse for putting up with disrespect does it begin to take on its true meaning: yes, they did do the best they could, but it just wasn’t very good, and it hurt us. That’s the sad truth, and that truth needs to be addressed because if it isn’t, it denigrates the true spirit of forgiveness and keeps us—and our narcissistic relationship cohorts—in a chronic state of ikkiness.

When you take care of yourself, you also take care of everyone around you. Once you understand this, you will no longer use “they did the best they could” to avoid responsibility to those you love, but rather, as a way to help them along their path. We can’t change other people, but we can change the world by changing our little corner of it one self-defeating behavior at a time.

I learned a great adage years ago in my women’s therapy group: “Stay on your own side!” It means that when you’re in conflict with another person, take care of yourself, stand up for yourself, speak your truth. If that sounds obvious, then you probably don’t need to read this. But if it sounds like hope and light, then you may have some of the same issues all of us did (and sometimes still do), and you probably want to be better at taking care of yourself in stressful situations. If you habitually:

• are afraid of conflict,
• expect to be proven wrong before you open your mouth,
• don’t feel okay wanting things from people,
• believe you don’t deserve to ask for what you want, or
• feel undeserving of other people’s respect,

then you may have trouble staying on your own side, and this article may be of some help to you.

Usually, we heard “Stay on your own side” from our therapist when one of us talked about a conflict, or an expected conflict, with a parent or sibling. Family conflicts are often the hardest situations in which to stay on our own side because family is where we originally learned not to. If you grew up in an environment where a parent or sibling’s anger could have devastating emotional or physical consequences, then you may have learned that the best way to handle conflict was to shut down and avoid it at all costs. Doing so was probably the smartest choice when you were little, but shutting down during conflict as an adult is devastating to your spirit. Unfortunately, it can be an extremely difficult thing to unlearn.

Why? Because staying on your own side—that is, unlearning to avoid conflict—can go against deeply ingrained survival tools that we learn at a very young age. When you’re small, it can feel very literally like a life and death choice to avoid someone’s—particularly a caregiver’s—rage. When something is that deep and that old inside of us, we usually have to confront a whole gaggle of personal beliefs and fears if we want to get past it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress while we’re doing so.

Not too long ago, I realized that the biggest of these limiting beliefs for me, and I think for many of us, is that I don’t get to take care of myself in the face of conflict. That is, a part of me still believes that I am unworthy of having desires and opinions and rights like other people do. I’ve understood intellectually for a long time that this is a lie, but a very old, very little part of me still believes it. I can still get flustered in tense conversations, I can still feel shameful afterwards, I can still lose myself and say things I later regret, I can still shut down or avoid situations when I know it’s in my best interest to speak my truth. Staying on my own side is not yet an automatic response; I have not yet fully owned it as a basic and inalienable right, which, of course, it is.

Nevertheless, mastering the mechanics of staying on my own side, largely through that group (the only place where this important issue was specifically addressed), was extremely important. I learned how to take care of myself despite my beliefs, and that process resulted in my recent deeper awareness by laying the groundwork for such an awareness to occur. And such ever-deepening self-knowledge is essential to our growth—whatever the issue, topic, or belief. Being willing to face our demons can be 90% of the battle. And when we don’t know what it is we need to face, learning the mechanics can often get us there. This is especially true for very old and deep-seated issues, issues hard to see and hard to accept, that all of us have in varying degrees.

So, learn the how of staying on your own side, and eventually you will understand the why of it. The best way to learn both is within the confines of a safe, supportive environment, particularly one with a psychological focus like group therapy. Group therapy re-creates a safe family environment in which you can re-learn (or un-learn) poor coping skills that result from feeling unsafe as a child. It is also undoubtedly the most efficient, and the most satisfying, way to work on such issues.

Finally, a word of caution: staying on your own side does not mean you have license to say whatever you want, whenever you want. Speaking your own truth never means that you get to deliberately or thoughtlessly hurt anybody, including somebody who hurt you (such hurtfulness, in fact, mimics the person who hurt you). The biggest reason for this is that hurting others isn’t being on your own side; it’s as spirit damaging as avoidance and will feel as bad afterwards. The essence of staying on your own side is about respecting yourself and others equally.

Certainly, most of us, maybe all of us, have trouble standing up for ourselves from time to time, and this is not in itself proof of a deep, dark lack of self-worth. But habitual conflict avoidance or big shame reactions afterward can indicate underlying issues of low self-worth or lack of self-respect. Staying on your own side is a basic aspect of being a healthy, functioning adult. As such, it is an important thing to be able to do. If you can’t, you’ll avoid all sorts of opportunities to learn, grow, and expand your world. I can’t think of too many things more tragic in the realm of personal development.

In reviewing all the topics I’ve been writing about since I started this blog, I realized that one of my main topics is spirituality. Because spirituality is such a vague and emotionally charged word, with myriad definitions and connotations, I thought it would be a good idea to write an overarching explanation of what I mean when I use it.

Spirituality is, in essence, discovering what nourishes your spirit and practicing it. By spirit, I mean the part of yourself that feels most alive: useful, connected, expansive, healthy, vibrant, whole. What makes life worth living. Spirituality is found in the answers to such questions as Who am I? What is meaningful to me? What do I want to do with the time I have?

Spirituality, as I use the term, has nothing to do with mythical gods or imaginary beings, or even with your own soul, at least not as an entity that goes on living after your body dies. It has to do with being and becoming the most whole person you can.

Spirituality is not something you choose. Spirituality is a basic attribute of being human, as basic a drive as safety, hunger or procreation. As such, it isn’t an either/or, you have it or you don’t; you have it. But it’s a spectrum we move along our entire lives, and we can choose to develop it or not.

Sadly, our culture is uncomfortable with the whole topic, preferring to relegate it to the realm of organized religion and not talk about it outside that context. This is like relegating the topic of money to cashiers. The difference between, say, a fundamentalist Christian’s or Muslim’s idea of spirituality and someone who’s spent a lifetime studying it (Joseph Campbell or Alan Watts, for example) is like the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. And we all pay dearly for this cultural avoidance, this lack of clarity on such a crucial topic, so necessary to our sense of who we are.

Relegating spirituality to the realm of mythical religion—that is, a religion that teaches the reality of mythical beings in the sky—is one of the great tragedies of our modern culture. We are left largely void of vocabulary to discuss concepts like utmost value, highest meaning, and deepest wholeness without conjuring up images of a bearded man sitting on a cloud, frowning down on us and shaking his head as he ticks off marks on his tally sheet, or a mother goddess doing much the same (but with different priorities). The result is a culture with a gigantic vacuum where those concepts are supposed to be, and a people who don’t know where to turn when they can no longer tune out that vacuum with distractions (a condition commonly referred to as “anxiety,” “depression,” “nervous breakdown” “mid-life crisis,” and the like).

But just because we’ve relegated spirituality to mythical religion doesn’t mean it has to stay there. Mythical religion, as I’ve stated elsewhere, is only one level of spirituality, and quite an unsophisticated one at that. It’s the level of children who want to be protected and taken care of, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting that, staying there is certainly prohibitive to the full blossom of human potential. Rejecting it generally means that you’ve achieved a more sophisticated worldview, and that’s good. It means you’re asking the right questions and thinking about the right things. It means you are a seeker of truth.

But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t think atheism (for example) is a non-spiritual worldview. The process of reaching the atheistic conclusion is itself a spiritual one. In fact, it is the very essence of spirituality. What could be more spiritual than defining one’s own truth? Nothing. Truth and spirituality are, I believe, synonymous terms. If you seek truth, you are a spiritual person. And if you are a spiritual person, nothing is more important than seeking truth. (Even if your truth is severely limited, which explains why fundamentalists are so vehement: they genuinely believe, with the zealotry of children, that truth is on their side. Say what you will about fundamentalists, they are nothing if not sincere.)

The fundamentalist Christian or Muslim, the atheist, the mystic sage; are all spiritual, all are seekers of truth. They are merely at different rungs on the spiritual ladder. As are drug addicts, gang members, soccer moms, and anyone else you care to name. We are spiritual beings because we have no choice in the matter. Finding meaning for ourselves is not an option. The only question is, do we seek consciously, or do we avoid doing so?

Finally, you could call spirituality personal growth, personal development, self-actualization, self-improvement, or any of the many other terms applied to the movement toward wholeness. But by any other name, it’s too easy to overlook the proper sense of wonder about consciousness itself and that the Universe exists at all. Much less ponder our place in it. I believe such pondering is essential to becoming whole, regardless of beliefs about god, and “spirituality” is more inclusive of that than any other term I can think of.

Salvation lies not in Jesus, but in shifting our cultural spiritual focus from “dogmatic beliefs” to “sense of awe.” If you think carefully about the implications of such a shift, you’re bound to agree.

When I got sober, I was a devout atheist. An avid Ayn Rand fan and a reader of existential philosophy. At about four months sober, I went to a big, all night New Year’s Eve bash at a convention center downtown. There was live music and dancing, lots of food, party rooms, and dozens of round-the-clock meetings. I hadn’t given much thought to my spiritual life at this point, but I did know that I was going to have to figure some stuff out soon, because spirituality was a biiiig deal to all the people I knew who’d managed to put some sober time under their belts. While at this bash, I met a fellow who told me, in intricate detail, about his near death experience. I don’t know why he did this; I’d never seen him before and not seen him since. But he just came up to me and started talking. His story was so mesmerizing, and so shook my beliefs, I went to the library a few days later and began researching near death experiences.

Whether or not what this man told me was true is irrelevant. It was exactly what I needed to hear to start me down a path I needed to find. I had been in therapy for a while at that point, and had been working hard on my family-of-origin, shame, and self-esteem issues. I came into my 12 Step group with a lot of insight about those things. But about spirituality (by which I basically mean that which feeds my spirit, and the process of figuring it out-for me, it has nothing to do with a mythical beings), I was an ignorant babe; arrogant and opinionated, too. So I was very lucky to have had an experience that brought me ‘round to a new way of looking at things.

My point is this. Recovery is a complex thing, but it has two main facets: uncovering work and discovering work. Uncovering work is about facing your demons, and discovering work is about expanding your awareness (spirituality). In fact, I would go as far as to say that personal growth itself (which is really what recovery is) is comprised of these two main streams of development.

Digging deep, reaching high. Both are essential to growth and well being.

Neglecting either one will leave you incomplete. People who turn to religion to deal with their emotional pain tend to believe they’ve found The Answer to their problems and scoff at therapy. They tend to settle into a rigid system of externalized values that allows them to avoid looking at what caused their pain in the first place. Such rigidity and avoidance is not conducive to uninhibited growth, so these people don’t typically make it past a certain level unless they confront the system they’ve created for themselves. And this is true for all dogmatic practices, not just Christianity. Buddhists can fall into this, and 12 Steppers, too, as well as practitioners of dozens of other religions, denominations, and belief systems: if you’re using a practice to avoid dealing with emotional pain, the differences among them are merely superficial. (However, if you earnestly desire growth, if you are a seeker of truth, then most practices, including non-religious ones, can get you there.)

Conversely, people who turn to therapy to deal with their emotional pain tend to get caught up in the whole process of “working through their issues” and focus too much on the internal; on themselves. They can make great progress with self-esteem, and coming to terms with their family-of-origin issues, and stating their wants and needs decisively, and taking care of themselves, and the like. But without a spiritual aspect to this process, people tend to become more assertive narcissists and get stuck there. This makes sense; as anyone who’s had therapy knows, the therapist’s job in helping to fix your damaged parts is to iterate, in as many ways possible, how great you are, until you start to believe it yourself (and if she’s good, she’ll be able to provide rational arguments for each iteration). But if we take this too much to heart, without something in place to balance things out, self-absorption is a logical outcome. Much of the fun poked at therapy and many of the aspects of it that many people find distasteful are rooted in this fact, and I believe it is mostly warranted. And this is sad, because it’s sooo important to do this work if we want to become truly self-actualized people, or even to have a shot at it.

It’s so easy to neglect and ignore things that cause discomfort, and to fall into routines that seem to work, but are woefully incomplete if we take the time to really examine them. I was lucky to have had the experience I did so early in my sobriety, to have one of my major blind spots so gently and poignantly pointed out to me. It set me on an essential path that quickly (amazingly quickly, in fact) became second nature to me. My spiritual beliefs, that is, my understanding of what nourishes my spirit, have evolved over the years and look almost nothing like they did back then. (Although oddly enough, most of you would probably consider me an atheist.) They have become such an integral part of my life that it’s difficult to imagine I’m the same person who had such a negative attitude toward spirituality at one time.

None of this means that I’ve conquered all my blind spots or that I have everything figured out. Not by a long shot. But having this big picture perspective of uncovering and discovering allows me to step back and see recovery (growth!) as this constantly evolving, infinite process, a sort of upwardly moving spiral upon which I am sometimes conveyed and sometimes the conveyor, sometimes reaching up, sometimes digging down, sometimes uncertain and sometimes crystal clear, but all and always with a sense of moving forward.

You must do both. You must uncover your emotional blocks, and you must discover what nourishes your spirit and pursue it. These two processes must intertwine, build on each other, and become, in a sense, second nature, in such a way that you incorporate both into your daily routine and take neither one for granted. Whatever your belief systems are–and it truly doesn’t matter!– uncovering and discovering will take you where you want to be.

(Or: How to do Several Things at Once, All of Them Badly)

When I was a kid, I remember my father saying about one of my less introspective friends that “she’d go nuts if she had to be alone in a room for more than half an hour.” This was an ominous foretelling of what the post-industrial world has, in many ways, become. One way to look at that is to consider multitasking, doing several things at once in order to save time and increase efficiency. At work, multitasking may be an asset, as long as it doesn’t distract you from your most important tasks. But in the personal realm, multitasking is nothing but a way to miss out on your life. And assuming that most of the activities in your personal life are pleasurable, that’s very sad indeed.

I think our obsession with multitasking is a result of living in a society inundated with stimuli. Overstimulation is a real problem. Unless we consciously seek to shut it out, we are constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli. Television, radio, iPod, billboards, newspapers, email, the Internet, cell phones; you can’t even fill your gas tank, push a grocery cart, or use a public restroom without some sort of advertising assaulting your senses. We’ve gotten so used to all this stimuli that we can feel lost without it, and seek to create it in our own lives. Busy-ness for its own sake has become a shared cultural value for many. Thus it’s become a common perception that if we’re doing several things at once, stimulating ourselves in as many ways as possible, we’re being productive and useful.

This is, of course, a fallacy.

If we’re doing several things at once, it’s more likely that we’re doing all of them poorly, and not giving our full attention to any of them. Multitasking is kind of a chronic state of inattentiveness, and inattentiveness is a serious issue, because the stuff we’re not paying attention is the substance of life. It’s easy to miss what’s going on in front of you and, more importantly, miss what’s going on inside of you.

We are beings, not doings. If you’re uncomfortable with simply being, you aren’t fully experiencing your life. Quiet time is necessary for introspection; introspection is necessary for awareness, authenticity, and growth. A steady diet of external stimuli causes us to miss out on all of this. There is more beauty and wisdom possible in one quiet moment of solitude than in a million moments of stimulus bombardment. This is because in that one quiet moment, a moment where you’re present with yourself, you have the opportunity to transform. In fact, this is largely what you’re distracting yourself from.

Why? Because it’s easier. Inattentiveness, distraction, focusing on minutia, or not focusing on much of anything at all, keeps us from exploring deeper questions and meanings in our lives. When we are introspective, we have to think about things we’d rather not think about: what makes us sad, what we haven’t accomplished, how we’d like our relationships to be better, god, mortality, etc.. It’s easy to avoid these things, and the distractions of modern life compound this easiness, but if we don’t take time to ponder them, then they remain unaddressed, and we make our way through life like a rudderless ship lost at sea, with no direction and no bearing, completely at mercy to the wind and weather. Easier, maybe, but infinitely less satisfying.

Have you ever seen someone out on a date answer her cell phone the instant it rings? I eavesdrop sometimes, out of curiosity, because sometimes, it’s an important call about business or children or a family emergency. But more often than not, an inane, pointless conversation ensues while the person’s dinner partner stares into space.

I used to marvel at this rudeness. I used to wonder why people would bring their cell phones everywhere with them: on walks, bike rides, picnics, dinners out, movies; why, I thought, would anyone want to be that accessible? After all, the phone is a tool for my convenience. I’m not supposed to become a slave to it. Then I realized that the cell phone has become one of the greatest multitasking tools ever created. Its power to distract from the present moment has no equal. While the cell phone didn’t create the problem, it has certainly exacerbated it. It is the ultimate tool of inattentiveness. It’s created this weird mindset that, even if we are enjoying what we’re doing, we feel compelled to stop doing it when the phone rings, especially if there are strangers around to observe. “See?” We say to them in our heads. “I am cool enough to get phone calls.” It’s almost as if it means that we’re taking part, that we’re an active member of society, or that it’s somehow a validation of our self-worth to receive a phone call.

It doesn’t mean any of these things, of course. All it means is that you’re unconcerned about being rude to the people you’re with or about being inattentive to what you’re in the middle of doing. Also, that you’ve bought into the idea that anyone who wants your attention must be more important than whatever you’re currently doing.

The deeper reason, though, that cell phones, along with all the other distractions of modern life, have the hold over us that they do is that we don’t want to be quiet with ourselves. Doing so almost certainly means facing some sort of unpleasant awareness, and who wants that? As long as we can keep busy and keep conversing, no matter how banal the tasks or conversations, we don’t have to look at ourselves. And that is the real appeal of multitasking. We get to see ourselves as productive and fulfilled even as we avoid dealing with the tough issues that will actually make us that way.

What a scam. But then, the best scams are the ones that allow us to believe what we want to believe, aren’t they?

When I was in a group therapy, we talked a lot about the concept of “getting little.” It happens in reaction to stress or fear, and it means that, emotionally, you’ve just regressed to a very young age. Sometimes just being around certain people, or even people who remind you of certain people, or events, can trigger it. It’s related to, perhaps even a version of, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and is almost always accompanied by intense shame. It’s a common stress reaction for people, particularly women, who grew up in invalidating or abusive environments. In fact, it’s so common, it’s surprising how many people don’t know what it is, much less when they’re experiencing it.

All of us in the group were familiar with “getting little,” although none of us had a name for it before we got there. Giving it a name made it easier to talk about and went a long way toward eliminating the shame that accompanied it. In fact, I think learning to deal with “getting little” was one of the most useful concepts I took away from therapy.

When you “get little,” you are literally unable to think or reason as your adult self. Your fear, anger, or shame—or some combination of all three—becomes so overwhelming that you can’t see past it. You’ve switched into survival mode, fight or flight; your logic and reason are not accessible. On some level, you feel your life is in danger, however irrational that may be. For example, if when you were small your father’s anger usually led to physical abuse, you may become irrationally afraid when someone you’re close to in the present gets angry. Intellectually you know that it doesn’t make sense, you know that your emotional reaction is “too big” for the situation, but every time it happens, you feel that familiar, overpowering sense of panic taking over, and you feel absolutely powerless to stop it.

It’s a terrible feeling. But that’s not even the worst part. When it happens, you can say or do things that you would not normally say or do. Afterwards, the shame from being out of control can be crippling, and it can be incredibly difficult to forgive yourself and get on with your life, much less connect with the people you’re closest to. This can be true even if your overreaction is to shut down rather than lash out; either way, the shame kicks in. Getting little can be a vicious cycle of impulsivity, shame, and remorse that can take a long, long time to break free of.

Recognizing it when it happens is the first step. When you find yourself feeling terrified, panicked, rageful, shut down, unable to think clearly, or otherwise powerless over your emotions, you have “gotten little.” Here are some suggestions for dealing with it:

1. Have a plan ahead of time. You won’t be able to think rationally when you are in the throes of “littleness.” This is why understanding what it is and why it’s happening is so important. During a time of calmness, make a plan to recognize it and know what to do when it happens. The following steps are what a plan might look like.
2. Honor the feelings. We have a tendency to be hard on ourselves when we get into this dark place, to dismiss the feelings because they’re irrational, and chastise ourselves for having them. This is not helpful. Instead, you have to understand that the feelings are there for a reason. Something very old and primitive inside you needs to heal, and it’s trying to get your attention. When it takes over, you must address it. The more you try to shove it aside and minimize its importance, the more demands it will make of you. This cycle of repression/denial is physically and emotionally draining, and takes its toll in all sorts of seemingly unrelated ways: anxiety, irritation, and physical symptoms of stress such as stomach problems, rashes, and getting sick a lot. So remember that above all, the feelings are real and you have to take them seriously if you want to get past them.
3. Immediately stop engaging in whatever is going on. Attempts to carry on a rational, adult conversation when you’re in this place are futile, and you know from experience that they rarely go well. Instead, you must step back and address what’s going on internally: What is the feeling? Why does it feel so big? What does it remind you of? What do you think triggered it? If the person you are with is safe, then tell him what’s happening—if you’ve included him in your plan, then he will be able to help you with your process. If the person is not safe, then simply excuse yourself and say you’ll finish the conversation later: do not allow yourself to be sucked back in. You could do some journaling at this point, or call someone who can help you work through your big feelings. Only when you’re calm and rational should you continue with what triggered the regression in the first place.
4. Deal with the shame. Shame makes us feel less-than; like we don’t matter and aren’t lovable or worth much of anything to anyone. This feeling is a lie, and the quickest way to get past it is to connect with a person who understands that. So connect with someone as quickly as you can and talk about what happened. But make sure it is a safe person. Don’t go to someone who will require an explanation or worse, a justification, of what’s going on. You should have two or three people on your call list who can fulfill this purpose (and you for them). This is in addition to the person you’re in conflict with, even if he is safe.

I stress “safe” people because when we have issues like this, it’s usually because we were raised in unsafe environments and never learned how to take care of ourselves very well emotionally. If we don’t consciously address the issue of unsafe people in our lives, we will often go to the very people who created the problem in the first place for comfort. It sounds crazy, but unless we teach ourselves not to, we often keep going back to the source hoping it will be different. Maybe someday it will be, but that is not helpful in dealing with your shame in the present. Being “unsafe” doesn’t necessarily mean our parents and siblings are bad people. It merely means that they are not able to understand our issues in a helpful way. So it’s generally a good idea to make a rule not to go to a family member for help. Find support people who understand the issues and speak the language of shame; that’s what I mean by “safe” people.

We all get little sometimes; nobody is immune to it, and it doesn’t mean everybody automatically needs therapy. But if it happens often, and if the accompanying shame makes it hard to forgive yourself, then you might want to get some help dealing with it. Having an intellectual understanding of getting little is essential to taking care of yourself when it’s happening, and perhaps more importantly, dealing with the accompanying shame.

A couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend about motorcycling. He and his wife both ride, as do my partner and I, and he was telling me about a conversation his wife had had with one of her co-workers. Her co-worker asked her, “What do you like best about riding?” She replied, “I love those big, sweeping curves that last forever on mountain roads…what do you like best about riding?”

The guy replied, “I like dressing up.”

It’s springtime here in Minnesota, and the cyclists are out in droves. Seeing the guys in their leather gear, with their be-leathered women hanging on for dear life (neither of them wearing helmets) got me thinking again about the guy who likes to play dress-up with his $25,000 motorcycle. It got me thinking about the whole idea of costumes. What do people wear costumes, and why is it an interesting topic?

To answer the last question first, it’s interesting because it speaks to a phenomenon that I call “the illusion of non-conformity,” which basically means activities or outfits that allow people to see themselves as being unique, or wild, or naughty, or however it is they want to see themselves, without taking the risk of actually being any of those things. It isn’t exclusive to Harley-Davidson posers, but they are a stellar illustration of it because the dress-up factor is so over the top. What used to be an occasional sighting is now pathetically common: middle-aged, middle class people covered from head to toe in orange and black leather gear. Have you ever seen a pudgy middle-aged woman decked out in heavy leather boots, her fat behind squeezing out of squeaky-clean leather chaps (which are completely unnecessary for the casual level of riding she engages in); a too-snug T-shirt (or worse, a halter top) emblazoned with an out-of-state cycle shop name and some colorful combination of lightning, a motorcycle, an eagle, and an American flag; a leather vest; an orange-and-black headband tied neatly around her bleached hair, the H-D logo carefully displayed in the center of her forehead; and last but not least, huge H-D earrings flopping along as she humps her way through a roadside bar to the restroom, grinning vacantly from ear to ear and displaying her logo-ized gear like it’s a trophy she won? If you have, then you’ve probably done what I’ve done, which is to turn and look for her male counterpart, and you are not disappointed: he has all the same trappings, sans the earrings (although he may have a stylish gold stud protruding from one lobe). It’s obvious they think they’re the coolest suburbanites in the world, but what they really look like are walking advertisements for Missing the Point Entirely.

(Here’s a simple test to determine whether you’re a poser or a “real” rider: if your riding gear would be ruined by rain, then you’re a poser.)

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with wanting to ride motorcycles around on weekends, or even with wanting to dress up. People are free to do what they want, and I understand the allure of the motorcycle better than most. But people should not make the mistake of thinking there’s anything non-conformist about it, or that there is any expression of individuality going on here. The Harley-Davidson “lifestyle” is the result of a sophisticated marketing strategy, successful because it packages and sells the illusion of non-conformity to the middle class, perhaps better than any company ever has. Because of its historical association with antisocial nonconformists like Easy Rider and the Hell’s Angels, whose reputations are now mellowed with age, the gurgling V-twin cruiser bike has become symbolic of individuality, of the strong silent type who does his own thing and lives by his own sense of right and wrong; sort of a modern day cowboy. That is certainly who Easy Rider was.

But dressing up like him does not make it so.

Wearing a costume does not make you something you’re not. In fact, wearing a costume, professional uniforms notwithstanding, is indicative of a desire to conform, and not of individuality, as costume wearers tend to believe. This is true whatever your costume may be. From leather motorcycle gear to tattoos and piercings, to pants belted at the knee and sideways caps, to high heels and skin-tight skirts, to T-shirts with Bible verses on them, and any and all other outfits people wear for the sole purpose of declaring their affiliations to the world, a costume says, “I care what people think.” Ironically, the more outlandish the costume, the more the wearer is concerned what people think. More ironic still is that the desired perception the costume wearer wants to evoke is uniqueness.

Everybody wants to believe they are unique. But we all already are, so there is no reason to make the effort to be. Making such an effort belies a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality really is; it has almost nothing to do with how we look on the outside.

The costume is powerful because it’s safe, while true nonconformity is scary. A true nonconformist risks misunderstanding, ridicule, ostracism, demonization, accusations of heresy, and worse (depending on the rigidity of the culture one is not conforming to). True nonconformity disturbs people; true nonconformists are the people others politely refer to as “different.” And while not all nonconformists are geniuses—some are mentally ill, emotionally disturbed, or simply uninterested in things most people are interested in—all creative endeavors down through the ages have been undertaken by people willing to risk nonconformity for the sake of their ideas. And this is a guess, but I think that all true nonconformists down through the ages cared not a whit about how they appeared to other people, beyond the norms of common dress. They were too absorbed in pursuing their own creativity.

People who succumb to the illusion of nonconformity are missing that point about individuality, that it is about pursuing their own unique creativity. They have found a safe, non-threatening way to express their impulse to be unique without actually being so. The sad thing is, the illusion hinders them from finding their true individuality. It’s just a comfortable diversion. True nonconformity is hard and scary, but I submit that if something—you fill in the blank—isn’t hard and scary, it probably isn’t going to get you where you really want to be.

Not even on the back of a motorcycle.